Always As You Say (Book One In The Waven Series)

33

He was acting normally again, or mostly normal. He was still with that same girl, but other than that he had reverted to his old self.

It didn't make fucking sense. He had been acting like, like I frightened him, like he could tell just how easily I could and would hurt him, and once I had actually gone to get something to hurt him, he stopped being afraid.

"What crawled up your ass?

Come on, you've been sitting in the dark for days.

How about I go get dressed and then we can do something, Bree's in my room right now, but I can get her to go home for now. What do you say, we could hang out just you and me?"

He was standing there in nothing, a fucking towel, acting as though he couldn't remember that anything was ever off between us, and yes I do think it was necessary to mention he was only wearing a towel, for it drives home how completely inappropriate and extraordinarily uncomfortable what I did next was.

For as soon as the words left his mouth I had him pressed to the wall, my forearm to his throat, his body trapped between my legs.

"What the fuck is wrong with you, huh? Why are you pretending that nothing's wrong?

You've been acting like a scared little lamb for weeks now," And here I pressed him more firmly into the wall, not missing how his breathe caught in his throat as I did so, "Cowering away from me, and now you just want to pretend that you haven't?

You think I'm going to let you just act like everything's fine?"

"Nik-" I loved the way his breathe caught on my name, loved how choked off and claustrophobic his voice was, and I leaned in closer, inadvertently pressing my arm harder against his throat, making his breathing even more ragged.

I could still smell him, I don't know how I never noticed that before. By this time his scent should be a faint memory, old as he was now, but I could still smell it as clearly as I always had.

It was still just as intoxicating as the first time we met, overwhelming my senses, so it's no wonder I couldn't stop myself from leaning in further, crushing his delicate throat as I did, no wonder I paid no mind to the obvious difficulty he was experiencing with breathing, for I was far to busy trailing my nose across his jugular, breathing in that scent.

"Nik, please I can't-"

"What gives you the right?" He smelt confused now, maybe frightened, but that served only to increase the power of his scent, to pull me deeper into this fog that I had lulled myself into.

"What gives you the right to look at me with that inflated sense of self-righteousness, with such fear and disgust, and then turn around and act like you always have?"

"Nik-"

"You hurt my feelings Anthony, you made me feel as though you didn't care.

You do care, don't you?"

"I- Nik I can't breathe." But I couldn't hear him, I was drowning in his scent, and he hadn't answered my question.

I pressed in closer, determined to bridge the gap that had been created by his lack of answer, but stopped immediately at the next sound to exit his pretty little mouth.

He sobbed, just a little thing, to be honest it was probably because he thought I planned to hurt him, which I didn't, not yet, and I'm sure now that if I had noticed the pressure to his throat, noticed how dangerously low my voice had gotten, I could have rectified this immediately.

As it was I froze, still stuck in the trance his scent had held me in, and just, stayed there.

"Are you afraid of me?"

This was answered only by another sob, louder than the first.

And finally the pressure on his throat was eased, but only because that hand had moved to tangle itself in his hair, the other pinning his hip harder against the wall.

I used the hand in his hair to tilt his head further out of the way, burying my nose in the crook of his neck, my senses oversaturated with the power of his scent.

"Answer me, Anthony." This time my voice was harder, escalating in time with his heart beat.

"Ye-es.

I'm, I'm sorry. I shouldn't-I. Yes Nik, I'm afraid of you." It seemed to tear him up to admit that, but it was exactly what I needed him to say, I could feel my anger rising at the prospect of him fearing me, of him thinking I would hurt him.

Though I guess he wasn't really wrong was he?

I stepped back, disentangling myself from him, my hands from his hair and hip, with the rest of me following, not stopping until I could breath without choking on the smell of him, and then I continued walking, ignoring his voice in the background telling me to come back.

I had to, had to walk out and get that knife, because as much as I dreaded it, I knew this was the moment when I would kill him, when I would finally end this useless pain.